By the time you read this, world peace will have broken out. Israel and the Palestinians will have embraced each other lovingly and opened up a big falafel food court; the financial crisis will have ended because everybody will have realised greed is just so Bush-era; and a new, friendly, welcoming United States will suspend all immigration restrictions — just for you, gentle reader, just for you. Or, at least, that is what a hundred thousand column inches of words, taken together, seem to expect from an Obama presidency. Column inches that have really begun to outlive their always-dubious usefulness.

Some sentiments can’t be wrapped up nicely. They’re too shocking for any preparation to work; expressing them puts you too far outside decent society. So I’ll just say it, and try and defend myself weakly later: I’m already bored of Barack Obama. And he hasn’t even been president a whole day.

Bored, bored, bored. Bored of being told how picture-perfect his family is. Bored of being reminded he’s African-American. (I’d noticed a while ago, thanks.) Bored of being told this is a moment of historical magnitude. Bored of being told that he’s the world’s choice for President.

This grinch-like attitude to everyone else’s simple, gushy, pleasures may make me a terrible person. But I don’t think I’m as alone as it may appear; and if I am, that’s dangerous. Because if the world’s really quite as breathless as it seems, there is real danger for the transformative potential that a post-Bush presidency can, indeed, embody.

... contd.